How She Heals

My sister’s gunna hate this part of the story.

I had a baby chick when I was about 6 years old.  I was a bossy little girl, but growing up in the projects of Donna, you kind of have to be tough but then it also meant I didn’t have a lot of friends, so someone got me a little baby chick. I don’t recall many moments of pure innocent joy & peace in my childhood, save for when I’d get home from school & would run to meet my little friend in my room. I’d play with her for hours. One day, I came home & before I could get to my room, my mom told me my sister had accidentally killed my chick. I don’t even know that I believe that anymore.  My mom was cruel to me. I’m not quite sure why she hated me so much but I know it was enough to walk up to me, grab me & put her cigarette out on my arm, & enough to not spare me the details of my little friends' last moments.  Something changed in me, but I learned to hate in that moment. For a long time, even up to a few years ago, I was so afraid of not being in control of my world because control was how I stayed safe. & control doesn’t always look like nagging or lists, because that’s not what I did. Control can look like settling; like not challenging your position by having boundaries, trying to not create waves. To me, it was not allowing myself a voice because having a voice had gotten me seen, targeted & hurt.

A couple years ago, when I first started to adventure by myself, I worked mostly on just sitting in solitude. It’s not to say I hadn’t had moments to myself throughout my life but, moreso, that I didn’t know how to allow myself to come through. It was always riddled with tasks, or a timeline. My husband at the time didn’t like me going anywhere alone & 15 minutes into being at a coffee shop, I’d be getting a call to come home, then I’d return to an upset husband & a brick wall to talk to, so I opted to just…not rock the boat. I did that until I couldn’t anymore, & so, over time, I began to leave more & more. Now single, planning a hike was easier but still fueled by a challenge to make my solitude count. In other words, “I am by myself but I’ll make this productive by running 9 miles through rugged terrain in 100 degree weather.” I began to stop during my trail runs to admire something lovely, & just for a moment, enjoy the running stream too. Eventually, I began to hike. I began to undress the layers of expectation to prove my value to myself little by little. I still love trail running, I still love to challenge myself physically but the point was that I didn’t have to do it to make my time in that space matter. I’m matter-ing all the time, I realized.  Even if I stand naked in this field & do absolutely nothing, that’s me being busy, doing everything I want to do. & so, it was the way vines would encircle a tree, because that made me stop. & the way mushrooms grew on the sides of a grassy hill, because they made me stop. & the way a flower let the sun rest on her pedals, because that made me stop. & the moss, the dragon flies, the bees buzzing & the birds - because no matter what was happening in the world or in my mind, what heaviness I carried that day or what blissful joy I embraced - it was all those things that prompted a stirring in my soul to the point of being 6 again, running my fingers over the fur of my little chirping friend, reminding me that there’s innocence in me that hadn’t yet been robbed & never would be so long as I continued to notice all the ways in which it all mattered. I think it’s all a hug, at times, or a gift. I can imagine God leading me into these places I visit & Him saying, “Look! I made this for you!” How lovingly I feel his embrace in those moments.

We had a winter storm in Austin a few years ago that left many of my trails blocked by fallen trees, destroyed, it seemed. I sat in the middle of the flowing creek, looking around at what was left; it was the strongest parts, I realized. I love the way you heal yourself, I told nature:

I love the way you heal yourself.

A righteous rage reveals the sage. 

You’re beautiful even as the scabs of a hundred millennia bleed at you,

pierce you until you cry:

waters rise,

You scream until you light the sky,

Pull the dying roots, branches whip & we hide.

The emerging of the new begins with you.

But first, a righteous rage - 

Then we bloom.

So truly, when I say nature healed a broken thing inside of me, I mean that all that hate I felt much too young, all the fear I found hiding with me in corners or closets, what I mean is that nature showed me there can only be room for a new creation if there’s a righteous destruction of the old. I’d been angry, lost, even willingly, consumed by darkness. I had to choose to bloom, & I did. So here I am, another creation amidst creation - surrendering to this moment & the next because I refuse to be afraid again.